


The Firebrand Alight

by davaia



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, M/M, Not much plot, Obi-Wan's sass is genetic, Qui-Gon is the Jedi's HR nightmare, Romance, Some Plot, Space Husbands, erotic/awkward fruit consumption, senator au, there’s always that one creepy Twi’lek at the office holiday party, trigger warning for galactic government bureaucratic inefficiency
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-10-09 01:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10400625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davaia/pseuds/davaia
Summary: Bits of the life and love of Jedi Master Jinn and Senator Kenobi of Stewjon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OddlyExquisite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddlyExquisite/gifts).



>   
> 1\. This is for O.E.! Last September we crossed brain-streams about Senator AUs, so that’s why this thing happened at all. On the days when I’m not entirely convinced we aren't the same person, I’m pretty sure she’s the Louise to my Tina Belcher. (ps: I stole a tiny and very precious thing from one of your stories for this, O.E., and I will not apologize for it.)
> 
>  2. A special thanks to Merry_Amelie and sanerontheinside! They both helped ensure our good [future] senator was tidy and presentable before his first public appearance! 
> 
> 3\. Written to lots of things, but mostly [this song](https://youtu.be/TPxxqqsDPWc), which does well to capture the sort of vibe I have in my head for this world. Also! I maintain a very active garbage can over on [tumblr.](http://aidava.tumblr.com) Feel free to say hi!
> 
> 4\. NB: This was originally conceptualized as a one-shot, but I'm opting to post in tiny-tiny 1k-3k chunks, 'cause of Life Stuff™. Onward!  
>   
> 
> 
>  
> 
> *****  
> 
> 
>   

Pride has no place in the life of a Jedi. 

Humility is trained into them from the crèche, where they learn it inward and down to their bones, then grow to present it outwards again in their appearance. They dress themselves in the trappings of this humility, grounded into the symbolic earth with their brown and cream roughspuns, shrouded in their monasticism and renunciation of material excess. 

The fact doesn’t escape Qui-Gon Jinn, though, that of all the billions living on Coruscant, the Jedi are among the very few who are privileged enough to see the sky. It’s the sort of cynicism that can never really be coaxed out of him, even with the softest and gentlest of hands—and especially not at the end of a long day guiding the Order’s youngest and most pristine minds. He’s _tired_. 

Twilight is overtaking the Temple Precinct now, chasing long shadows down the central, marble-lined corridor as Qui-Gon returns home for the evening. He walks slowly, hands folded into his sleeves, and nods politely at the colleagues whose gazes inevitably flit up and down his weary body—most sympathetic, some just pitying. He finally raises his hood in a tacit bid for peace and anonymity, conserving the last bits of himself for the only person whose gaze really matters. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi is Qui-Gon’s partner in life and love, and anything the galaxy sees fit to give them afterward. He lives _among_ the Jedi, but he is not _of_ the Jedi, and amid this solemn sea of muted beige, Obi-Wan shines like luminescence itself. It’s true that he stands out by appearance; he wears his political rank in heavy silks and copper, and the rarefied air of ancient nobility—but all of these fall away under his _goodness_ , completely inborn and unlearned. 

The way others of his station wear their finery, Obi-Wan wears kindness and simple dignity. 

Pride in himself is a foregone conclusion. Qui-Gon has owned the same mud-brown robe for a decade now, and he’ll downplay his own accomplishments to his dying breath—it’s his duty, after all. His deep, abiding pride in _Obi-Wan_ , however—the Order’s most hidebound traditionalists couldn’t wrest that away from Qui-Gon if they tried. 

Obi-Wan is extraordinary. 

Qui-Gon thinks this to himself with a decades-old love that has long since over-topped the confines of his own soul, and encroaches daily upon the boundaries of the Force itself. It is fitting, too, because it was only through the extraordinary providence of the Force that they ever found one another again. 

As he approaches his door, the hall around Qui-Gon grows quieter, narrower, dimmer. Much, much older. This used to be one of the most densely populated residence wings in the Temple. Now it’s a secluded home for a tiny fleet of obsolete cleaning droids, one semi-retired Jedi Master, and one of the most powerful men in the known galaxy. 

  


* * *

  


It was a feat of modern technology, Qui-Gon thought, that a pile of wires and circuitry had the ability to look jaded with its own existence. 

He was grounded on-planet for a mandatory notary rotation in the Executive Annex Dome, a savagely clinical structure adjacent to Coruscant’s Senate Building. This was where the real business of the Galactic Republic took place with frank and driving purpose, and the design catered strictly to that single capacity. Soulless, drab, convoluted. Those prone to cynicism might have called it the perfect place to house the Republic’s politicians. 

Not that such cynics, oath-bound keepers of galactic peace that they were, would voice such strident opinions within its halls. At least, not _aloud_. But Qui-Gon's demeanor was just ornery and restless enough that the Annex administration might formally request that he never be sent again. 

A Jedi could hope, at any rate. 

He was finishing up his daily circuit the same afternoon the Temple’s admin-droids decided to suffer a system-wide coding malfunction, which resulted in an automatic rejection of all inbound transmissions, and half the Order’s diplomatic contacts receiving copies of the refectory’s weekly vegetable delivery. 

That was how senior Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, fiercely skilled swordsman and the Order’s most formidable negotiator, found himself tasked with courier-level errand running. Facing down that hateful panel of admin droids he wondered, fleetingly, if they would consider themselves fortunate to suffer a catastrophic coding malfunction, just like their Temple brethren. 

“Security credentials and appointment code.” 

“307-Jenth-Dorn-0014,” Qui-Gon recited flatly, and pressed the tips of his index and middle fingers against the print scanner. A thick film of grease coated the screen, like the menu pads at Dex’s, filthy and gone uncleaned from the oily touch of a thousand different species. He felt the machine heat beneath his skin as the laser clicked into action. 

“Read error,” the voice-box squawked. “Thank you, species humanoid, and very much please attempt again.” 

Qui-Gon quelled his irritation and pressed his fingers to the scanner, a bit more forcefully than necessary. The light flashed again, bright and insistent. 

“Read accepted. Please stand by,” the admin droid burbled, “Confirming… confirming… confirming…” Its eye-voids went dull as it accessed the Annex databanks, sifting through a hundred million bits of irrelevant data. 

Qui-Gon’s lips thinned and he wiped his fingers on his robe. 

“Appointment confirmed: Kenaari, Ele-Bren. Senator, Stewjon. Province, Aari. 17:00 Standard. Please proceed to Level 4, Quadrant 3-Blue, Suite 402-Leth.” The droid spat out a thin strip of flimsy with the office coordinates, then flashed its sensor one more time. “Species humanoid, would you care to participate in the Executive Annex Dome Administrative Division customer-experience survey for the chance to win one of—” 

“ _No_ ,” Qui-Gon said crisply, and turned on his heel. 

The lift down to Level 4 was cold, grey, windowless durasteel. The corridors of Quadrant 3 were cold, grey, windowless durasteel. The air in this sublevel was frigid and heavily recycled, smelling of some clinical sanitizing vapor. The building gave Qui-Gon that disoriented, directionless feeling of deep-space drift—and from the few name plates he recognized above the doors, this section of the Dome was reserved for the people and places deemed too politically insignificant to warrant any spare elbow room or sunlight. 

The Jedi pulled his cloak tighter and walked with swift, renewed, heavy-footed purpose. Kenaari’s door was easy enough to find, and—in a rare display of Executive-Annex competence—it chimed open the moment Qui-Gon scanned his appointment-flimsy print. 

The cramped office was cluttered with storage boxes, abandoned caff mugs, and bland, commercial furniture—although there was no sign of Senator Kenaari herself. In fact, the politician’s office appeared to be staffed only by a single, overworked senatorial aide, who was almost lost amid the administrative chaos. 

The young human sat hunched over his desk, flicking through the screen of a battered, Senate-issue datapad. A set of copper wrist-cuffs clinked with each tiny movement of his fingers, the only sound in the room beyond the muted whirr of the air vents. His mess of russet hair was bundled into a braided knot on the back of his head, and he was oddly and archaically dressed in a heavy muslin tunic with wide, intricate bands of crimson embroidery. 

Qui-Gon folded his arms into his sleeves and noted, offhandedly, that the young man looked out of place in this cold, government office. Like some ancient, rustic, hand-forged relic trapped in a clinical display case of glass and steel. 

The Jedi began to wonder whether his arrival had gone unnoticed, when the aide called out in a voice that was pure, high-bred Core. “Hello there!” he said. “You’re here for the Ag Crescent subcommittee reports?” He looked up, then, and stared at the Jedi with eyes that were bright green and grew just a bit too wide. He quickly pushed his work aside and stood up. 

“Yes, I’m—” 

“Master Qui-Gon Jinn. I know you.” 

The comm on the desk began to flash and buzz, but the man ignored it. 

Qui-Gon frowned at him. “Forgive me,” he murmured, “I don’t remember you. Have we met before?” 

“I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect you to,” the man countered. The words gave Qui-Gon pause, but the tone behind them was friendly enough. 

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he supplied, blindly jabbing his finger at the comm unit to silence it. “I spent thirteen years in the Order. You rejected me after the Initiate Trials,” he explained, “I left for the AgriCorps the next morning.” 

The memory was vague, undisturbed for nearly a decade, but Qui-Gon thought he could remember a skinny boy with bristly, ginger hair and a fearsome, quicksilver energy. It had only reminded him of Xanatos at the time. All of the Initiates did, though, back then. Given enough time, Qui-Gon’s memory would twist even the brightest, most kindhearted youngling into the eidolon of his fallen apprentice. 

“But you didn’t stay,” Qui-Gon observed, for lack of anything better to fill the silence. 

Kenobi gave him a small, indulgent smile. “No,” he said plainly, and extended his right hand across the desk. 

Qui-Gon stared at him in confusion for a moment, before he realized the other was offering him a bundle of datapads—the transcripts he had come for in the first place. He accepted the records with a tight smile, and tucked them away into the folds of his tunic. “Thank you.” 

“Of course,” the younger man responded warmly, but said nothing further. 

The Jedi felt pinned beneath Kenobi’s expectant gaze, taken off-guard, compelled to give the man some small, conciliatory gesture in light of their newly revealed and long-forgotten connection. “I…” he drifted into momentary silence, then relented. “I am sorry. There were many I treated unfairly in those days. Few faced consequences so great as leaving the Order.” 

It had become his life’s secondary work, he thought, to make amends for the hurt he had wrought upon others in the wake of Xanatos’ betrayal—unintentional though that hurt was. Qui-Gon imagined he would be on his death bed and still begging forgiveness from someone, with a hundred wounds yet undiscovered. 

“ _Consequences?_ ” Kenobi echoed, brow furrowing. His gaze sharpened, fixed on Qui-Gon’s face, and the Jedi got the impression that the man was scanning him far more effectively than the dreary admin droid had. 

He didn’t want to know what Obi-Wan found. 

“I hope your life has turned out well,” Qui-Gon added with a smile that was soft and tired, and he turned to go. 

“Has yours?” Kenobi called out behind him. 

The Master paused, hand outstretched for the door panel. He let it drop back to his side, and peered back at the man over his shoulder. “That is irrelevant,” he responded quietly, flatly. “I serve the Force as it calls me, Intendant Kenobi.” 

In that moment it wasn’t calling out, but whispering into his ear—a broad, gently insistent presence that stood between Qui-Gon and his only means of escape. 

“ _Magistrate_ ,” Kenobi corrected, not unkindly, “Magistrate to the High-Sward Provinces and Northeasterly Straths, specifically. I was elected two years ago.” 

“Magistrate Kenobi,” Qui-Gon amended himself, and dipped his head in a cool, polite nod of self-dismissal. 

“Just Obi-Wan.” 

Qui-Gon sighed, “I wish you well, Obi-Wan.” He palmed the door sensor. 

“May I buy you a caff? Or tea?” Obi-Wan blurted out, almost compulsively. “I’m done in an hour—I’d just—” he squared his shoulders, then, and set his jaw. When he spoke again his voice was smooth and posh beyond anything the Jedi could even imitate. “I rather idolized you when I was younger, Master Jinn. I would welcome the chance to speak with you. To hear more of your life, since we parted.” 

Qui-Gon almost smiled at the straight-backed sincerity of this fledgling politician. Obi-Wan’s display of schooled, courtly formality was almost convincing. _Almost_ , but he was given away by the faint, nervy flush high on his cheekbones. 

A beat of silence passed between them. 

“Very well.”

  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The rooms are smaller here than elsewhere in the Temple, but the location affords the men a level of privacy they would not otherwise have. They chose their home together, largely because it looks outward upon the distant Senate District skyline, and inward upon a rebellious and unkempt solarium garden that Obi-Wan insists, only half-teasing, reminds him of Qui-Gon. 

_The narsi vines are looking a bit temperamental today_ , he’ll comment in the early mornings, clutching his chipped mug of tea to his chest as he peers down into the wilderness two levels below. He does this every morning—leans his weight on the wall, drowsy and soft-eyed, hair loose and messy and tucked behind his ears—and assesses the tiny jungle that creeps ever closer towards him with each sunrise. 

Qui-Gon will press himself to his beloved’s back, his cheek to the top of the man’s head. He’ll wrap one arm around Obi-Wan’s chest and hold him there, while the other slips inside the gap of the man’s thin sleep robe, seeking out the bare, dusky-freckled skin beneath. 

_Perhaps the dorva bushes were kicking them in their sleep again_. 

  


* * *

  


The hour had given Qui-Gon just enough time to drop the datapads off with the Temple’s newly repaired admin droids, but not quite enough to talk himself out of this unexpected reunion with the young _Magistrate_ Kenobi. 

_Greenhouse_ was a tearoom on the edge of the Senate District, a subtly marked building down a narrow alley—chic beyond anything a Jedi would set foot in of his own accord. A glassy chime sounded as Qui-Gon entered; otherwise, the teahouse was hushed and full of bright sunlight, minimalist in design, and _filled_ with blossoming, lush plant life. The air smelled of fresh earth and the floral bitter-bright tea leaves drying on wood racks beneath the skylights. 

It reminded Qui-Gon a bit of The Room of a Thousand Fountains, though smaller and exclusive in its own way. 

Obi-Wan was seated at a small, semi-private table set for two, half hidden behind a rambling curtain of blue-marbled ivy. He looked like he’d cleaned himself up—smoothed and rebraided his hair, at least, and put on a heavy, cream overtunic buttoned high around his throat and bound tight around his waist. He was distracted, making a mess of his plate as he peeled apart a tiny liwifruit with long, restless fingers. 

Obi-Wan stilled when he sensed Qui-Gon on the periphery of his vision. He looked up at the towering Jedi, sticky hands paused mid-motion. "Hello there." 

With sudden and bizarre clarity, Qui-Gon remembered Initiate Kenobi’s face—still rounded with youth, full of fire and drive and aching desperation to be _good enough_ , all hidden under a mask of solemnity beyond his _few-but-almost-too-many_ years. 

A moment passed where they both stared and neither spoke, before Obi-Wan blinked and motioned to the tea set on the table a bit sheepishly. "I arrived early and I didn’t know what you might like," he explained, and wiped his hands on a green cloth napkin. 

There was a note of tension in his voice, but when Qui-Gon said, politely, "This looks lovely," Obi-Wan’s face blossomed into a pleased smile. "Good," he said, reaching out to right one of the ceramic mugs and fill it for his guest. "I—good. I do hope you drink sapir." 

"A personal favorite," Qui-Gon responded. He shrugged out of his robe and carefully folded it over the back of the chair before taking his seat across from Obi-Wan. The table was small, and their knees bumped beneath it. "Thank you." 

"You’re welcome." Obi-Wan’s words were half-spoken, half-breathy laugh—and a faint flavor danced across the tip of Qui-Gon’s tongue at the sound. Something that tasted the way dry sweet-grass smelled, crisp and earthy-green. 

Qui-Gon frowned down at his tea for a moment, confused by the dissonance between his senses. He took a careful sip, and the airy flavor vanished beneath the familiar and mellow wash of sapir. 

Obi-Wan didn’t notice his expression, too busy fixing his own cup. "It’s rare that a Master of the Order can take a social call on such short notice," the young politician observed while he poured. His movements were practiced, graceful—his posture and manners and tone all turned Core-cotillion perfect in the blink of an eye. 

The phrasing of that remark kicked Qui-Gon’s mind into motion, and he evaluated the familiar, young stranger across the table from him on instinct. Implicit gratitude for the perceived inconvenience, a glancing invitation to deeper conversation without pulling Qui-Gon into a direct, potentially invasive line of questioning. 

Textbook blue-blood conversational tactic, that. 

Qui-Gon wondered if this poised, high-bred sophisticate had been hiding within that spitfire Initiate he’d met so long ago. With raw material like that, Obi-Wan could have made an astonishingly formidable knight and negotiator. It would have taken a Master of exceptional skill and patience and wit to do the boy justice, though. 

And a Master of exceptional ignorance not to see him at all. 

Qui-Gon didn’t let himself linger on the thought. Instead, he settled into a routine he knew well and deeply, learned through decades of training and delicate, give-and-take social diplomacy. "I’m on my notary rotation with the Senate," he explained, "until the end of this month." 

"My condolences," Obi-Wan countered, smile turned a bit wry. 

"Appreciated." Qui-Gon leaned back in his chair and pushed his long tunic sleeves towards his elbows, conscious of dragging them over the tabletop and boiling cup of tea. "I assume your situation has more permanence," he remarked lightly. 

Obi-Wan faltered. "A—ah," he uttered. "A bit." 

His gaze was fixed on the slow, dragging movement of Qui-Gon’s hand over the fitted cloth of his undershirt. He swallowed once, thickly, then looked up again—forcibly recovering his graces. "For every three months on Coruscant, I spend one on Stewjon," he explained. "Mostly taking Senator Kenaari’s meetings. Attending town halls. Meetings to set up meetings. Meetings about previous meetings," he joked, attempting to regain some conversational ground. 

Qui-Gon arched a brow, pretending not to have noticed the odd lapse in Obi-Wan’s focus. "Any topics of particular note?" 

"That depends," Obi-Wan hummed. "Do you have an abiding, personal interest in the negotiation of Republic subsidies for prime and unique Mid-Rim farmland?" 

"I doubt it," Qui-Gon said, "but it seems like a convenient segue to ask how the AgriCorps’ newest member ended up collating subcommittee reports in the Executive Annex." 

Obi-Wan’s leaf-bright eyes widened, for just a brief moment. He didn’t answer immediately, looking as if he were considering how he wanted to steer the question. "I—" he began, and then consciously let his posture ease. The polite, crisp edges around his words seemed to round away as he opted for simple truth. "My family withdrew me from the Order," he said, "once they were notified of my reassignment." 

Qui-Gon read the slackened lines of Obi-Wan’s body language, and pressed deeper. "Not unexpected," he commented over his cup, expression neutral and eyes sharp and dusk-dark. "I suspect the venerated House Kenobi had a vested interest in reclaiming one of their own." 

The fountain next to their table belched up an air bubble.The Room of a Thousand Fountains smelled of wild, green earth. This one smelled vaguely of chlorine and treated city water. 

Obi-Wan was frowning. "How did you know about that?" 

"Your dress and distinctive speech mannerisms, mostly," the Jedi explained, "as well as your impressively young age for an elected position so close to the Senator." 

Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes, speculative. "You read the Holopedia page." 

Qui-Gon relented and cast the man his first true, if small, smile of the day. "Some of it," he admitted. "Should I address you as Your Lordship?" 

"Obi-Wan will do," the younger man said primly, unable to contain the upward twitch at the corner of his lips. He turned his cup between his hands, dragging his thumbnail over the smooth, clear glaze. "Do you research all your new social acquaintances before taking tea with them?" 

"Only the ones with noble ancestry," Qui-Gon responded seamlessly, "who used to be Initiates of the Order. Those are few and far between. Besides…" he paused for a moment, and chose his next words carefully, "We’re old acquaintances." 

Obi-Wan swallowed. He opened his mouth to reply, but snapped it shut when the sleek, chrome busser-droid rolled by to claim the plate of abandoned liwi peels. He thanked it, apparently out of habit. 

The redhead seemed to waver a bit before he spoke again, as if his resolve had momentarily flickered out. "Being from a Ken of ranked nobility was likely a factor in bringing me home," he finally said, hauling their conversation back into lighter waters with almost visible effort. "I suspect, though—" he offered a smile, "—that my parents might just have missed me." 

Obi-Wan paused to swipe his fingers through a splash of tea on the table. "After my second week in AgriCorps, I came back to the station to find my Da up to his elbows in Master Chendibugg’s trumpet flowers, while Mum had afternoon tea with her. My little brother was asleep on the floor in the soil lab." 

The image was a sweet one, a counter to his few and fraught memories of Initiate Kenobi. Qui-Gon felt something gentle stir inside his chest, and tried to chase the source of it. "You have a brother?" 

"Obi-Wen," the younger man said, eyes brightening. "We call him Owen. I have sisters, too. Ysonne, Lydie, and Orla. They’re quite a bit older." 

"Do they call you Obi-Wan?" 

"Ben," Obi-Wan said, "I’m just Ben, when I’m at home." 

Qui-Gon could feel warmth that unfurled in the Force when Obi-Wan spoke of his family. It lingered diffuse in the air around them, a feeling like coming in from the bitter cold outside—coming in to glowing, incandescent light, and to comfort, and to _home_. 

It was both intoxicating and completely alien to the Jedi Master. 

Obi-Wan was working the rosy peel off a fresh liwifruit, and made a triumphant noise in the back of his throat as he pulled a section free. He dipped forward, then, and sucked the nectar off his own arm before it could dribble down to stain his sleeve pink. "Have you ever visited Stewjon?" 

"I never had the opportunity or occasion," the Jedi admitted, staring at the spot of damp skin on the inside of Obi-Wan's wrist. "I—don’t know much about it." 

Obi-Wan sat back and offered the second half of the liwi to him. "It’s a planet of great, sloping plains and steppes," he explained, pressing the pearlescent fruit into Qui-Gon’s palm. "We’re on the outer Core, technically Mid-Rim space three days a standard year. We have more in common culturally and economically with the Mid-Rim Agricultural Crescent than anywhere else, really." 

"Part of the Core World breadbasket, then?" Qui-Gon bit down into the fruit, and the juice of it blossomed sweet and sour against his tongue. 

Obi-Wan hummed out a thoughtful noise. "The planet is too small for any significant contribution," he said, "but it’s placed well. We primarily act as an intermediary between the Core and outer world shipments. We do make our conciliatory, annual offering to the noblesse at the center of the universe, though." Obi-Wan’s lips quirked into an odd smile. "All things considered, I suppose I was bound for the fields, one way or another." 

Qui-Gon swallowed. He wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he puffed a noncommittal noise into his tea and said nothing at all. 

"I didn’t—I didn’t mean anything by that." Obi-Wan’s hands dropped to the table, rattling the dishes. He sat forward, fingers curling along the edge of the wood. "Have I made you uncomfortable?" he asked suddenly, abandoning wholesale any lingering propriety between them. 

"I’m sorry?" Qui-Gon looked up sharply. 

"It’s just," Obi-Wan started, suddenly unsure and lost for the right words, "You look as though I’ve cornered you. I suppose I rather did." His brows notched in an expression somewhere between earnest and self-conscious. "We can talk pleasantries all afternoon, if that’s what you’d like to do," he said. "But I wouldn’t take offense if you left. Truly, I wouldn’t." 

"I—" Qui-Gon’s jaw worked once, twice, then he sighed and opted for plain honesty. "It’s been a long time—a _very_ long time since I’ve sat down with someone for tea," he admitted. "At least when there’s not a trade agreement or armistice attached to it. I’m afraid I’ve lost my manners along the way. Please forgive me, Obi-Wan. You deserve better than that." 

Obi-Wan groaned and raked his fingers through his hair, mussing up the neat lines of his braids. He dragged his hands down over his face and scrubbed at it, gracelessly. "Oh, stars," he muttered, "Can we just begin all this again?" 

"Obi-Wan—" Qui-Gon said, mystified by Obi-Wan’s insistence, "why did you ask me here?" 

The younger man shrugged and slumped back in his chair. "I never thought I’d have the chance. I told you—" he said, "I looked up to you, when I was younger. Tremendously. I could feel you in the Force, even then—like some great, unstoppable thunderstorm, but your mind at the center of it always felt serene. Calm." 

"Barricaded," Qui-Gon corrected darkly, "Not calm." 

"Regardless," Obi-Wan pressed, sitting forward again, "I admired you deeply, and long before I met you at the Trials. You were quite the presence in the Temple." 

"Less than you would think," Qui-Gon answered softly. "My presence there has… diminished, in recent years." 

Obi-Wan watched him with the same evaluating, inescapable gaze he’d leveled on Qui-Gon earlier that day. "You also looked terribly lonely, in the office this morning," he added carefully. 

"You know that just from handing me a pile of subcommittee records?" Qui-Gon asked rhetorically, something weak and half-hearted in the humor. 

"You didn’t refute it." 

"Because you’re insightful far beyond my tea preferences." 

He didn’t look Obi-Wan in the eye when he said that. Instead, he turned his heavy gaze to the embroidery along the man’s jacket. The thread was thick and deep carmine, hand-stitched into an extraordinarily intricate pattern of vines, plum blossoms, and birds with ebon-tipped wings stretched outward in flight. 

Beautiful, understated, deceptively simple from a distance. The sort of thing produced by exquisitely rare and dying skill. 

Obi-Wan’s mellow voice broke his thoughts. "I used to think of you, quite a lot actually, when I was younger. Long after I left the Order," he said. "I still do, sometimes." 

Qui-Gon folded his hands onto the table, drawing his gaze upwards again, over the line of the man's arm. "And what do you think now?" he asked delicately, almost afraid of the answer. 

"That you were a good man in a terrible moment." Obi-Wan cocked his head. "That you’re still a good man." 

" _How_ , Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon demanded. "I rejected you without a second thought," he insisted fecklessly, darkly, "I never looked back. I _forgot_ you." 

"And I’m _fine_ ," Obi-Wan countered with equal force. "For kriff’s sake, do you really believe yourself to be so far beyond empathy or forgiveness? Or just undeserving of it?" 

He struck his mark, flawlessly and wholly unaware of it. 

Qui-Gon felt his heart crack, just a bit, inside of his own chest—like the expansive heat-pressure of pouring hot liquid into something frozen and hard and brittle. He’d been a cold man after Xanatos’ fall, and in the subsequent years, in his encounters with all who had known him at the time, Qui-Gon had been met with everything from apathy to a sympathetic, passing sort of pardon. 

He glanced up to say as much, and his breath stilled in his lungs. 

For all the heat in his words, Obi-Wan watched him with an expression of such open kindness and understanding and _yearning_. He looked for all the world as if he wanted to reach out and touch the man across the table, to reassure him, held back only by his own reservation. 

It cut him to the quick, more swiftly and cleanly than any spoken word in the galaxy. Qui-Gon dropped his gaze and his head, bronze hair slipping forward to curtain his face—humbled by the kindness of a man who had every right to resent him, to hand coldness back in-kind the way it had been handed to him. 

"Qui-Gon?" Obi-Wan’s voice was threaded with alarm, and he finally did reach out, then, to rest just the tips of his long fingers on the Jedi’s arm—concerned, questioning. His touch left trails of unnatural, flickering warmth in its wake, even through the cloth of his undershirt. "Did I say something wrong?" 

"No," Qui-Gon admitted bleakly, gazing at the hand on him. "No… it’s just a strange thing," he explained, "to seek forgiveness and be told that you’ve already had it for years." 

"Strange but not bad, I should hope," Obi-Wan remarked, then his face and voice softened. "You told me that few faced consequences so great as I did, in leaving the Order. I have a happy life, Qui-Gon." He pressed down with his fingertips, lightly, affirming his words and grounding the man across the table with his touch. "If few others faced such dire consequences for knowing you, then the lives left in your wake are _good_ ones." 

The rest of Qui-Gon’s heat-cracked heart broke, then, and the Jedi’s eyes grew warm and damp in a way that was almost unfamiliar. Silence lingered heavy in the air between them—heavy, but patient, and filled with ancient, unspoken sorrow. "You’re a far wiser man than I am," he finally whispered, "and I suspect the loss of you is something from which the Order will never fully recover." 

"I’m right here," Obi-Wan countered with gentle insistence, "I’m not lost. I never was." 

The grip on his arm tightened, then slid down to cover his hand. The touch was staggeringly intimate to him, yet somehow not _enough_. Starved for it, Qui-Gon was overcome by the sudden, upwelling urge to drop to his knees before Obi-Wan, to press his face into the man’s tunics, to let himself drift beneath the warm wash of unconditional kindness, and to _hold on_. 

Instead, Qui-Gon just turned his palm up, closed his rough fingers around Obi-Wan’s. "Obi-Wan, I—" his voice was too tight. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I would like another pot of tea." 

"Tea...?" Obi-Wan uttered in vague confusion, then, as realization dawned, "Of course. Yes—of course." He still gripped the elder man’s hand, using the free one to wave down a server droid, and ordered a second pot of sapir, along with a plate of ginger biscuits. 

The moment gave Qui-Gon just enough time and fleeting privacy to gather himself. 

Order placed, Obi-Wan looked back and squeezed Qui-Gon once, tightly, and let go. "All things considered," he began, with purposeful levity, "the Senate is very likely the worst pack of unmannerly savages in the galaxy." He smiled, then, like lambent sunlight breaking through fog. "So we must be in good company with one another, Master Jedi." 

Qui-Gon huffed into his tepid cup. "You don’t strike me as the sort of person prone to wanton savagery," he said, allowing himself to be drawn gently, gently upwards and out of his darkened thoughts by the man across the table. 

Obi-Wan sipped his tea with a look of affected thoughtfulness. "I suppose I did brush my hair this morning. And my fangs." 

At that, Qui-Gon actually and finally laughed. It was a deep, rumbling noise that sounded foreign and wonderful to his own ears. "Never mind," he said, the line of his shoulders relaxing, although his voice was still a bit thick. "You’ll do just fine in politics." 

"Too bloody _right_ I will," Obi-Wan said crisply. He poured out the last of the lukewarm sapir between their mugs, then arched a single, groomed brow. "Has it really been so long since you’ve had tea with someone else?" 

"A good twenty years or so," Qui-Gon said, then added mildly, "If you don’t count having tea with myself." 

The redhead’s face remained impassive, but the tips of his ears flared scarlet as he spoke over the rim of his cup. "And if you do?" 

"Nineteen years." 

Obi-Wan choked on his tea, blushing furiously as Qui-Gon passed him a napkin. "This isn’t—" he paused to cough up the last of his dignity into the cloth, "—this isn’t quite how I imagined this going. Any of it." 

"Nor I." 

"What did you imagine?" 

"I didn’t," Qui-Gon admitted with gentle, strange gratitude that resonated from the very core of his soul. "I don’t think I ever could have." 

  


* * *

  


The door lock is so antiquated he has to punch in a manual code to open it. 

The apartment is dark and quiet, empty, but Qui-Gon always sees the soul-comforting traces of their shared life when he returns at dusk. Breakfast dishes abandoned in the sink. The interior balcony door left cracked open, forgotten. A ring of dried-up tea on the counter that still has smudged traces of Obi-Wan’s fingers, where he tried to wipe it away in his hurry to leave for work. 

Qui-Gon sets about rousing their little home for the evening. 

He turns on the glow-lamps in the common room; drops his robe and leather utility belt onto the sofa; pulls off his boots and socks so he can feel the old, silk-smooth kitchen tile against his bare feet as he goes to start the kettle. 

The dishes and cookware for dinner are already waiting on the counter. Obi-Wan set them out that morning, because there will never be a moment in the rest of Qui-Gon’s life that he won’t be too stubborn to admit he can’t reach for them anymore. Moving their pots and pans to a lower shelf would be an admission of the same, if indirectly, so Obi-Wan just readies them in the mornings after Qui-Gon has left to lead the Initiates’ pre-dawn meditations. 

While he waits for the water to boil, Qui-Gon sags back against the counter and tugs the folds of his sash and tunics loose. The thin straps underneath are itchy and Qui-Gon drops his head with a groan, scratching at them with abandon—it’s been driving him halfway to Darkness and back since five minutes into the Initiates’ evening meditations on the _Koan of Perpetual Stillness_. 

"Small pleasures," he mutters at the potted kitchen fern. 

The kettle chimes and clicks off. 

  


* * *

  


The Force was a subtle, growing thing in the air around them—invisible, gossamer-thin strands self-spun and wove around and through the Jedi and the young magistrate. Binding them together, inextricably, between easy words, cups of sapir, and soft, speculative glances shared over a nectar-sticky tabletop. 

By the time they left the teahouse, Coruscant’s evening fog hung low and wet and bone-chilling. Obi-Wan huddled into his thick overtunic and Qui-Gon drew his hood up, shielding himself from the worst of the damp. They stood together in the alley for a moment, shoulder-to-shoulder, waiting for the other to break the silence that neither wanted broken at all. 

Finally, Qui-Gon turned to look down at the younger man. "Obi-Wan, today was… I can’t—" 

Obi-Wan kissed him, simply and sweetly. With his arms still pulled tight over his chest, he rocked up on his toes and kissed Qui-Gon just on the corner of his mouth. He held there for a breath, and his lips made a soft noise as they drew back from the older man's damp skin. 

Overcome, Qui-Gon couldn’t help but brush his fingers against the spot. His voice was quiet, gone rough around the edges when he finally spoke. "Is that how you bid someone farewell on Stewjon?" 

Obi-Wan smiled. He worked a warm hand loose and reached up to curl it over Qui-Gon’s jaw. "Not really, no," he admitted, letting his thumb drift up and over the older man’s scruffy cheek. He wet his lips once, nervously, darkened eyes flitting down to Qui-Gon’s mouth and back up again. "I live in the next quadrant. You could come home with me, if you’d like." 

Qui-Gon’s mind reared back on instinct, even as he inched closer to the heat of Obi-Wan’s body. He couldn’t. He _couldn’t_. 

_Feel, don’t think. Trust your instincts._

Qui-Gon used to. He did, until his trust in himself dissolved away alongside a putrid mass of human tissue and black hair, in an acid pit on faraway Telos. 

_Feel, don’t think. Trust your instincts._

It was not his own mind’s voice he heard. More like a half-formed, unspoken thought from deep within the universe. Supportive. Mollifying. Permissive. A spectral hand at his back that steadied him, gently drew his thoughts out of the past and into the present moment—serene and tea-scented and rain-damp, trembling beneath the weight of wondrous potentiality. 

_Trust this moment._

So Qui-Gon did. 

He gave his reservations up to the Force and unfurled from the confines of his robe to hold Obi-Wan by the waist. He was clumsy and out of practice, and he accidentally bumped their noses together before he found Obi-Wan’s lips with his own. 

The noise Obi-Wan made was a huff of surprise, but he relaxed swiftly and completely into the powerful frame of Qui-Gon’s body. He closed his eyes, then, and tilted his head to make the angle of their kiss right, just before they lost themselves in one another—words and forgiveness and the past suddenly become distant, ancient things. 

That day, Obi-Wan gave up four hours of his time and fifteen credits for the tea. 

Qui-Gon gave up his twenty years of celibacy.

  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

  
  


_The root of suffering is attachment._

What do the other Jedi see when they look at him? At what happened to him? Do they see a man dragged down by the anchor of his own attachment? Do they look at Qui-Gon Jinn’s failures, and then immediately look to Obi-Wan?  

All Jedi fail in their own ways, but Qui-Gon Jinn fails with _context_. 

They might not be wrong to think so, but they’re certainly not right. 

_Attachment leads to, leads to, leads to…_

Qui-Gon knows the pitfalls of attachment, that much is true. He has learned the maxims so well and deeply that they’ve long since dissolved into his own blood and bones. 

And he knows, now, that the creed of the Jedi is not a thing to be intellectually reconciled, not a thing which can be considered separate or outside of himself—but something which has become part of Qui-Gon so deeply and integrally, without it he could not move or breathe or _exist_. 

He cannot disobey the Code, because he is the grown and living embodiment of it—Qui-Gon _knows_ this, and comforts himself with it, in his worst moments of self-doubt, and when the gravity of his so-called apostasy is enough to overwhelm him. 

Not tonight, though. 

Tonight, the tea Qui-Gon chooses is an exquisite herbal blend imported from Chandrila, which Obi-Wan buys, since his personal expense account is one of the few things their keepers can’t monitor. He metes out the leaves, hums something cheery and tuneless to himself, and wonders—without malice and not for the first time—whether he was born a thousand years too late or a thousand years too soon. 

  


* * *

  


They had stumbled into Obi-Wan’s Senate District apartment with the taste of tea and nectar and each other still fresh on their tongues. As soon as the door hissed shut behind them, though, Qui-Gon broke the charged mood with a bark of laughter. "Senate stipends haven’t kept up with inflation?" he asked, grinning as he lifted his arms to prop his elbows on the walls of the dim, narrow foyer. 

He’d been in economy-class freighter bunks with more room. 

"Says the _monk_ ," Obi-Wan sniffed. "Besides,  I live at the office. You’ve seen it." He took advantage of Qui-Gon’s position to grab two handfuls of the man’s cloak and push it off his shoulders. Mid-motion, Obi-Wan paused and raised an eyebrow up at the Jedi, expression strange and speculative. "Can I—ah. Make you a drink, or something?" 

Qui-Gon snorted. "We just drank our weight in sapir," he responded dryly, arms still raised. "If I have one more drop, I’ll be floating back to the Temple." 

"Well it’s not as though I’m in the habit of asking Jedi Masters back to my home under sordid pretenses," Obi-Wan said archly, and redoubled his efforts at undressing the towering Jedi. "Pardon me for attempting to inject a bit of decorum into the whole affair." 

"Obi-Wan." 

" _Qui-Gon_ —" 

He kissed the retort out of Obi-Wan’s mouth. Leaning forward, he worked his shoulders just enough to shrug the robe away. It puddled onto the floor behind him, forgotten. 

Obi-Wan was a heady, contradictory mix of pliant and unyielding against him—his mouth soft and warm beneath Qui-Gon’s, opening for him with the barest brush of the older man’s tongue. His body, though, was unrelenting, pushing back with equal force and desire.  

Obi-Wan tightened his fists in the Jedi’s tunics, arms folded between them, and hauled him impossibly closer to deepen their kiss. 

"It’s not a pretense anymore," Qui-Gon murmured against his lips, "if you announce your intentions to the room." 

Obi-Wan bit the air in front of Qui-Gon’s mouth, teeth clicking. "Are we going to argue semantics or have sex?" 

"It’s the measure of a skilled politician to do both simultaneously." 

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. "Oh, _funny_ man— _off_ ,” he ordered through his teeth, then thrust at the folds of Qui-Gon’s overtunic like he was trying to throw open a set of heavy curtains. “All of this off, please and thank you.”  

The Jedi huffed out a breathy laugh, bracing himself against the wall as Obi-Wan scrambled to undress him—dropping his belt, obi, tabards, and overtunic unceremoniously onto the synth-wood floor.  

With the man’s undershirt pulled loose and gaping open, Obi-Wan hummed and pushed his fingers into the tight, lean muscles of Qui-Gon’s torso. “Stars, is this what I could have looked like?” he mused, teasing, breathy and light-headed with arousal. His gaze raked down the Jedi’s staggering frame, then flitted back up to meet Qui-Gon’s. "You’re gorgeous." 

Qui-Gon had always considered his body a product of requisite functionality, trained into its power by need and duty—physicality given over to the Force. Never a thing to be desired in and wholly of itself. His few relationships, long since past, had always been short-term matters of convenience with like-minded colleagues. 

The way Obi-Wan looked at him, though, with reverence and heat that burned like green fire—it made Qui-Gon _ache_ , made desire coil tight and hot in the pit of his stomach. It made him feel like a youngling all over, heady and hormonal with the onset of his first sexual encounter.  

Then again, Qui-Gon mused, that probably wasn’t too far off the mark. 

Obi-Wan’s hands were insistent as he inched backwards, tugging Qui-Gon deeper into the cramped apartment towards the bedroom. “You’ll tell me if this is too much,” he breathed out against Qui-Gon’s throat—half question, half command. "Any part of it." 

“It won’t be," Qui-Gon said firmly. “I want this. _You_.” 

Obi-Wan stopped them and hauled Qui-Gon down to kiss him, _hard_. He drew back with his teeth over the man’s lower lip, licking it for good measure before he murmured right into Qui-Gon’s ear, low and dark, “Then take me to bed, Master Jedi." 

They never made it that far.  

Qui-Gon’s knees didn’t quite give out beneath Obi-Wan’s honey-soft entreaty, but the poorly placed sofa did it for him. Already too big for the place and off-balance with the tangle of their limbs, he stumbled when he hit the corner of it.  

Obi-Wan made a split-second decision and shoved the tiny tea table out of the way with an ear-rending screech.  

He pushed the Jedi down past the sofa, onto his back, and straddled his hips. "Extended tour," he bit out, tearing open the line of snap buttons on his collar with a satisfying rip. One of the facings popped off and rolled away beneath the couch. "This is my floor." 

"Hospitable," Qui-Gon muttered, quirking an eyebrow when Obi-Wan batted his questing hands away. He was wearing so many heavy layers, trying to get at bare skin was like digging through a snowdrift that kept collapsing back in on itself. 

"Let me. It’s—" the redhead grunted, twisting to find the ties on the inside of the tunic, "Complicated." 

"No bevy of attendant droids to help undress your Lordship?" Qui-Gon teased, conceding to settle his hands on Obi-Wan’s hips and watch. 

"I sent them home for the evening." Obi-Wan flung his heavy coat behind Qui-Gon onto the couch, and his tunic—the red embroidered one from the office—followed in short order, pulling its owner’s tidy, auburn braids askew as it was tugged off over his head. "I’m not heartless." 

"So we’re alone, then?" He dragged his hands south, dug his thumbs into the crease of Obi-Wan’s thighs, rubbing just hard enough to tease and get a stuttering hitch out of the man’s breath. 

Obi-Wan pulled his own loose undertunic open. " _Ut_ terly."  

The word sounded impossibly posh coming from Obi-Wan’s lips, crisp and expensive, and then impossibly dirty when he punctuated it with a slow, sinuous roll of his hips over Qui-Gon’s, pushing himself deeper into the man’s grip. 

It was Qui-Gon’s turn to lose his breath. 

Obi-Wan’s body still clung to the gawky slimness of youth, but it was elegant all the same, dusted with freckles and moles like the one on his right cheekbone—the one Qui-Gon found inexplicably captivating. He pushed his rough, seeking fingers up the taut line of Obi-Wan’s stomach, through the fine hair at the center of his chest, then down again along the line of copper-dark curls that disappeared into his trousers. 

Obi-Wan watched it all through hazy, half-lidded eyes, muscles tensing reflexively beneath the Jedi’s callused touch. 

Qui-Gon found a familiar-looking burn scar, then, just above Obi-Wan’s left hipbone. "Lightsaber," he observed, glancing up again. 

Above him, Obi-Wan hummed a noise in affirmation. "Courtesy of Bruck Chun." 

He rubbed his thumb over pearly white tissue, then pressed his hand wide when he felt Obi-Wan shiver beneath the touch. The scar was thicker on Obi-Wan’s stomach, thinning as it angled upward and followed the curve of Obi-Wan’s side, around towards his back. "You were already down; he came at you from above," Qui-Gon remarked. "This was a dirty hit." 

"It was a dirty fight," Obi-Wan commented. He plucked Qui-Gon’s hair loose from its leather tie. "Over you." 

The Jedi leaned up to graze his lips over it, feeling the glossy texture against his own skin. "I never took another padawan," he said, then dipped his tongue out to trace the smooth seam between the scar and Obi-Wan’s pale, unmarred flesh. Then he did it again, with teeth. 

Obi-Wan moaned low in his throat. "You may yet," he uttered. 

"No," Qui-Gon said with finality. He pressed a firm kiss to Obi-Wan’s hipbone, then let his head drop back onto the cold floor. "I’ll never have another." 

Obi-Wan let the subject go, along with the rest of his self-restraint as he fumbled to get his own trousers open, then smacked impatiently for Qui-Gon to lift his hips, to get the Jedi’s leggings down around his knees. 

"Gorgeous," Obi-Wan repeated to himself, taking in the sight of Qui-Gon laid out beneath him. "Bloody perfect." 

It was frantic and needy between them—they rutted against each other like awkward teenagers, until Obi-Wan licked a messy stripe up his palm, and took them both in-hand as best he could; he stroked them together, roughly and arrhythmically, in a desperate bid to take the edge off.  

It was maddening, and the feeling tore a rumbling groan from the bottom of Qui-Gon’s chest. _Oh_ , but it had been too long since he’d felt pleasure like this—if he ever had at all. "Obi-Wan," he ground out, voice ragged, holding him tightly by the hips as he thrust upward, "I can’t—I won’t—" 

"Come on, darling," Obi-Wan urged him softly, still sounding illogically posh and collected, if a bit out of breath. He tightened his fingers with an obscene noise. "We have all night together. Let me—let me see you now." 

Qui-Gon moaned and tripped gracelessly over his own orgasm, it came on so quickly and intensely. Obi-Wan tumbled after him only a moment later, his whole body pulled tight and sleek just before he slumped down against Qui-Gon’s side.  

Laughing sun-bright, Obi-Wan mopped uselessly at the man’s chest with his own undershirt. “I’ll send our things down to the laundry droid," he said, then kissed his cheek. "I have a sheet that’ll fit you beautifully.” 

Qui-Gon had never had to consider his own middle-aged refractory period against that of a twenty-three year old lover. Not until they were in the 'fresher fifteen minutes later, and Qui-Gon found himself on his knees for Obi-Wan after all. 

What remained of Obi-Wan’s composure had flown out the tiny window. He was _undone_ —eyes bright and glazed, braids pulled half-loose, mouth open and panting, tongue pressed down against his lower lip. He was naked but for those maddening metal cuffs on his arms, pressed against the tile wall with his hands buried in Qui-Gon’s hair.  

Obi-Wan met Qui-Gon’s questioning gaze and uttered, low and broken, "Don’t—don’t stop. _Please_ —" 

As if, by now, Qui-Gon could ever deny him anything. He breathed in sharply through his nose, grabbed Obi-Wan by the hips and pinned him in place as he began to pleasure the man in earnest. It was certainly one of his more enthusiastic personal endeavors, he thought wryly, if not his most skilled. 

Above him, Obi-Wan _howled_ , then spat out a filthy litany of curse words between heavy, wet breaths. One of the neighbors pounded a fist against the thin wall, at which point he bit down on the back of his own hand to stifle his cries. He didn’t last long, and came for a second time, nearly bent doubled over Qui-Gon from the force of it. 

Obi-Wan slid down the tile wall with a soft moan, coming to rest in a boneless heap between Qui-Gon’s knees. He dragged his fingers across the older man’s jaw, pulled him close—then kissed his own taste right out of Qui-Gon’s mouth.  

It was the most wonderful, erotic thing anyone had ever done to him.  

As if he picked up on the thought, Obi-Wan smiled lazily and let his head drop down to Qui-Gon’s shoulder. He pressed his lips against it and asked, "Are you alright?" 

"Yes," Qui-Gon answered quietly, then looped his arms around Obi-Wan’s back and huffed a bit. "I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who could make vulgarity like that sound like the Queen’s Basic," he commented, feeling amused and just a bit self-satisfied. "Do you speak on behalf of the Galactic Republic with that mouth?"  

He meant it to be teasing, but Obi-Wan seemed oddly thoughtful, shrugging back on that air of ancient solemnity he appeared to wear too often. 

"Not really," he said with a sigh. He rubbed his cheek, already evening-scruffy, against the Jedi’s shoulder. "Honestly, I mostly make caff, order takeaways, and field complaints from the ag unions." 

Qui-Gon smoothed his hand over raucous, auburn hair. "You make a habit of selling yourself short," he observed, voice gone warm with affection. 

"Hm," Obi-Wan hummed, unoffended. "Maybe." He took a moment to shuck off his arm cuffs, and they clattered down onto the tiles next to him. Then he knelt up and rose to his feet, offering a hand to his lover. 

_Lover_ , Qui-Gon thought, accepting it and standing on shaky, cramping legs. He had a _lover_ —was someone’s lover in turn. It was something he never thought he’d be or have again in this life. Especially, of all the captivating and strange and paradoxical people in the galaxy, Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

They’d showered in earnest after that, using far too much of Obi-Wan’s expensive soap, until the meter installed on the wall clicked to life and began to charge by the minute for their wanton overconsumption of water.  

  


* * *

  


Qui-Gon runs through a quick, mental tally of his evening tasks, complete and incomplete: _tea is steeping, lights are on, home yet to be tidied, dinner yet to cook, essays yet to read_. Then at some point between any of those given things, because his schedule is fickle and flighty, just _Obi-Wan_. 

He leaves the teapot to its own devices and rifles through the conservator just enough to determine that there’s enough in it for him to make dinner, and that the milk has turned from blue to a curious shade of green. He shuts the door, then, and gathers up the detritus of his own clothing on the way to the bedroom. 

Qui-Gon strips off his tunics and undershirt, ignoring the stark jut of his own ribs; next, he strips off the wiry medical brace that always chafes irritated lines across his back and right shoulder, no matter how thickly he pads the straps. He puts on a loose pullover, then stuffs everything else wholesale into the laundry-drop—grateful that he has the permanent good graces of the Temple Quartermaster. 

Their bedroom holds little more than a worn-out rug and a bed that Qui-Gon suspects was designed for a Wookiee, but in reality is the most modest thing available which can reasonably hold two grown men who are, each in his own way, restless sleepers. 

Plain though the room is, this is the one space where, in the sum total of their collective lives, the men give themselves over to excess. Obi-Wan is shameless in the way he _luxuriates_ in Qui-Gon’s body—in every iteration of it throughout the years; he revels in every ebb and swell of muscle and bone, every inch of Qui-Gon’s cock, every mottled ridge of scar tissue, and every guttural sound he can coax out of the man’s chest with those clever hands. 

_Do you like this, darling?_ he’ll ask, voice dropped low and honey-dark, sucking on each of Qui-Gon’s fingers one by one, or dipping his tongue into the sensitive hollow of his throat, or working his hips in slow and shallow circles as he rides his lover into shivering exhaustion. Always curious, always watchful. _What about this…?_

The way Obi-Wan looks at him, sees him, the way he always has—it’s enough to make Qui-Gon want to strip himself bare, to lay himself open for this man and tell him, _Have any part of me you want—I’m yours, I’m yours._

And so on. 

Those sorts of nights have been few and far between since the last election cycle, but he doesn’t mind. Qui-Gon loves them when they come, and cherishes the memory until they do. 

When he comes back into the main room, his tea is ready and his mobile comm unit is pulsing with a soft, blue notification light. He taps the screen awake. 

_[19.33.01] Staying late for rewrites. Don’t wait up. Pom ordered takeaway._

_[19.35.32] Also: milk’s gone bad—forgot to toss it. Proceed with caution._

  


* * *

  


Qui-Gon wasn’t sure what he expected when they crawled into Obi-Wan’s bed, but it wasn’t for the younger man to tuck himself into the Jedi’s side and pull the blankets up, as if it were something they did every night together. He pressed a lazy kiss to Qui-Gon’s jaw, then twined their feet together beneath the covers and asked, "Tell me of your homeworld?" 

Faint on his tongue, Qui-Gon tasted sweetgrass when he spoke. "It’s a place of dense mountain forests and great, clear rivers of light," he murmured, voice a sleepy, tectonic rumble beneath his lover’s cheek. He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the peaceful sense-memory of it all. "Even the stones sing with the Living Force…" 

When Qui-Gon slept, he dreamt of hazy, copper-lit summer meadows.  

Deep into the night, he awoke to find Obi-Wan seated in profile at the foot of the bed—eyes closed, palms upturned atop his crossed knees. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber was clasped loosely in his left hand. 

He felt a flicker of acknowledgement that let him know Obi-Wan was aware of his scrutiny. 

Qui-Gon pushed himself up on one elbow. "You’re meditating." 

Obi-Wan didn’t stir. "I couldn’t sleep." 

Filtered through the open blinds, Coruscant City’s nighttime haze painted his body in a transient, kaleidoscopic wash of neon reds and blues and acid yellow. It made him look otherworldly, untouchable. He slatted his eyes open, then, lit eerie and electric green against the city’s sleepless glow. "We could never have had this, had I been your apprentice." 

"No," Qui-Gon acknowledged. He held out his hand, beckoning. 

Obi-Wan stared at it a moment, then carefully set Qui-Gon’s lightsaber down on the windowsill and crawled back up the bed. He took the Jedi’s outstretched hand, turning it up to press a dry kiss against the palm. “Please, Qui,” he murmured against the skin, "if tonight is all we get together—" 

His words, unfinished, drifted off into a silent undercurrent in the Force that struck Qui-Gon like a discordant note. 

_He thinks I’ll leave him._

But, no—that wasn’t quite right, Qui-Gon thought vaguely, trying to puzzle out the root of Obi-Wan’s discontent. He pulled the man to settle on top of him. _That I’ll forget him again?_

"Oh, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon breathed out, words so soft they were almost unspoken. He pushed his fingers back into messy, auburn hair, curling his hand around his head, then pulled him in for a kiss. It was slow, thorough, heavy with the drag of his teeth and tongue. It was tender and _loving_ —but there couldn’t be love between them yet, could there?  

Qui-Gon let the thought go. "Just tell me what you need," he entreated. "I’ll give you anything, but I need you to tell me." 

" _Everything_ ," Obi-Wan murmured between the press of their lips, "and everything you are." He leaned down, then, and guided Qui-Gon’s rough hands and fingers—precise and deadly in battle, hesitant and unfamiliar in intimacy—everywhere he wanted them, over and into his own body.  

He did the same with Qui-Gon’s cock. 

They’d had each other again, then, foreheads pressed together, bodies pressed as close as they could be, so achingly sweet and slow that their sweat dripped and pooled in the hollow of Obi-Wan’s throat, and Qui-Gon’s muscles trembled with fatigue. 

It was different this time, than what they’d shared before—hushed and heavy with a different sort of intent. This time, as they moved together, breathless and needy, beneath the weight of darkness and shifting fate, he felt the subtle depth of the Force within Obi-Wan. It was an abyssal and powerful thing—an exquisite garden rooted deep within the Unifying Force, designed to be cultivated and trained, instead left to thrive rambling and wild and of its own defiant will. 

Qui-Gon’s eyes stung and his heart ached for the wonder of it, at what he’d been given. "You’re—beautiful." The words burst out of him. "Obi-Wan, you’re—" 

" _Ben_ ," Obi-Wan panted against his ear, never losing the rocking pace of his hips. "Call me Ben, like this." 

" _Ben_." Rough. Breathy. _Worshipful_. The name was torn from his throat on the back of a growl, and Qui-Gon swept his arms around Obi-Wan’s waist and rolled to get the man beneath him; he held him fast, massive hands cradling his head while Obi-Wan stretched and squirmed and pulled his knees high, all to get the man between them— 

" _Deeper_." It was half-whine, half-sob. "Gods, Qui, deeper—please, _please_ —" 

He pressed a tender kiss to the inside of Obi-Wan’s thigh, and sank down until their bodies were flush. Obi-Wan was unrelenting beneath him, kissing him up to, through, and beyond orgasm. When they both got there, whatever that spectral thread was—the Force-spun thing which had wound itself down to their very bones—pulled itself fast between them. 

Qui-Gon collapsed bodily over Obi-Wan, chest heaving, mouth open and pressed damp against the younger man’s neck. The feeling was overwhelming, foreign and wonderful to Qui-Gon—to be immersed in the thick smell of sex and sweat, pressed against the vulnerable weight of his partner’s body. This was a different level of intimacy unto itself, lying in dazed and sated quiet as their breaths and pulses slowed back towards normal. 

Eloquence was an inborn gift of Qui-Gon’s, but he would never be able to put into words what happened in Obi-Wan’s bed that night. It wasn’t _sex_ , certainly not _fucking_ , and even _making love_ seemed shallow and fundamentally inadequate. 

_The complete dissolution and reformation of self_ , perhaps. 

Obi-Wan’s thin voice, whispered in his hair, roused Qui-Gon from his hazy thoughts.  

"What have you done to me?" 

Qui-Gon lifted his head, brow knotting with concern.  

Obi-Wan’s eyes were overbright and worried in the darkness between them. 

"Obi-Wan?" 

"You feel it too, don’t you? Whatever this is between us?" he asked, words edging towards a plea. "You have to." 

Qui-Gon kissed him, gently, suffusing it with something he sensed welling deep inside his own chest—a strange, cloudy feeling that hung suspended between relief and hope and staggering uncertainty. He finally drew back, not to draw away—but simply to share space and breath as lovers.  

" _Yes_."  

Qui-Gon understood the catastrophic potentiality of _love_ and _attachment_ —just as he understood the gentle weight of the Force against his ear and the way it murmured down to the very hollow spaces in his bones, _This is your future, Qui-Gon Jinn. It will not be easy, but all will be well and priceless beyond your imagining._

"Yes," he repeated, and tucked his head back into the crook of Obi-Wan’s shoulder, like an exhausted wanderer setting his bag down and knowing, for the first time, that he was finally home. 

_I’m too old. My life is wrong for you. The last thing I loved died and almost took me with it._

All his excuses rang petty and hollow now. Instead of giving voice to them, Qui-Gon pushed his fingers into Obi-Wan’s hair and, in three soft words, fundamentally redefined everything he knew of himself and his place within the galaxy. 

_"Stay with me."_  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nb: Please see updated archive warning. Considering how much time I spend in the Kylux and Hannibal fandoms, I realized my definition of _mild_ blood and violence might be a bit, uh, different than the average reader's... anyway, I decided to err on the side of caution!


	4. Chapter 4

Qui-Gon is pottering. 

That’s what Obi-Wan calls it, with that soft, aristocratic puff of air between the Ts— _pottering about_. Mug of evening tea in hand, Qui-Gon tends to their growing menagerie of houseplants—dips his fingers into the soil to check moisture, sprays down the fronds of the fussier varieties, bolsters them all with a touch of the Living Force. "Don’t tell the others," he murmurs at the kitchen fern, ruffling its soft leaves appreciatively, "but you’re still my favorite." 

He debates for a time over what to make for dinner: stir-fry or soup, stir-fry or soup, stir-fry or soup. The fern has no opinion of value to offer, but Qui-Gon decides on soup anyway, for the sake of clearing out the more tired-looking vegetables from the chiller. He taps his holo-comm on and turns it to the live, H-SPAN broadcast channel. With the volume on low, he pushes the unit off to the side of the counter, letting it play in the background while he works. 

Predictably, the Senate chamber is quiet and nearly empty. The broadcast is covering some subcommittee session on the reallocation of funding for internal droid upgrades and a sentient admin hiring initiative. Qui-Gon snorts and holds no hope of _that_ coming to fruition. Still—the matter is insignificant, perhaps, but he prefers to keep a weather eye on the tedium of the Galactic Senate all the same. 

Only half-listening now, Qui-Gon shakes his tired hands awake and sets about dispatching a pile of starchy pokka tubers into big, uneven chunks. He finds something calming and near-meditative in the repetitive motion, in coming home at the end of the day to preparing something warm and restorative for himself and his partner. 

It’s a habit inculcated solely through his relationship with Obi-Wan, though encouraged by his own lifestyle change in recent years. 

Obi-Wan lives his work and, if left to his own devices, would subsist on strong tea and protein bars and news briefs alone. It’s a lifestyle he knew he was at risk of falling into the moment he set foot back on Coruscant, not as _Initiate_ —but as _Magistrate_. There’s no trace of it in their home, though, beyond the physical presence of the man himself and a single Senate-issue datapad he only brings back with him when the galaxy’s catastrophes can’t wait until morning. 

He works at Qui-Gon’s desk on those nights, squeezed between the wall and a bumptious arekka palm tree. Qui-Gon busies himself with his usual evening rituals, and notices a moment later when the sound of restive typing goes quiet and the whole room becomes still. Datapad forgotten, Obi-Wan will abandon the galaxy—just for a minute or two—to watch his lover with soft-eyed adoration and a strange wonderment that drifts and curls like steam through the Force. 

_Have I got something on my face?_

It’s one of Obi-Wan’s favorite things in the galaxy, he says, to watch Qui-Gon occupy himself with the mundane and unremarkable parts of life. 

_No. I just like it when you potter about, is all._

  


* * *

  


Qui-Gon learned again, beneath Obi-Wan’s giving and eager body, every smallest intimacy he might have missed in twenty years alone. The physical aspect of their new relationship was an easy thing to slip back into; the emotional, however—removal from the strictures of Temple life had left Obi-Wan much more open with his feelings and astonishingly tactile in his affection with Qui-Gon. 

At least in the privacy of his own home and, nearly as often in those blissful first weeks, his bed. 

Haltingly, slowly, in bits and pieces and fragments, Qui-Gon began to overcome his own ingrained hesitation and reciprocate. It didn’t quite happen soon enough for his liking, though. One of them had to leave the other, eventually. 

Obi-Wan left first, for his month-long rotation to Stewjon. Qui-Gon couldn’t help the thread of trepidation he felt, walking away from Obi-Wan’s tiny apartment, wondering how they’d fare with countless lightyears between them. 

It was a small relief that his recent scarcity within the Temple had gone, if not unnoticed, uncommented upon. He should have been disturbed by how fundamentally his life had changed in so short a time; how, around him, the Temple felt muted and blurred, as though he were insulated from it and everything within. A stranger, he mused bleakly, but pushed the thought away for another time. Hood drawn low and dark around his face, Qui-Gon slipped into his cold and impersonal quarters—and his first night alone in nearly three weeks, he spent in meditation. 

Obi-Wan had brought fresh clarity, it seemed, to the maxims Qui-Gon had long thought settled within his own mind. 

_Trust the path as it is revealed to you, one stepping stone at a time._

The first message arrived two standard days later. 

Qui-Gon surfaced into awareness to find his mobile comm unit, left on the floor next to his zafu cushion, pulsing with a blue notification light. He tapped it awake and opened a still-holo of a glazed ceramic mug, taken from a patio table which overlooked a dense and flowering plum orchard. There was a hazy, dreamy quality to the scene—the world soft and still half-asleep beneath dawn’s muted light over the landscape. The picture was captioned with one sentence: 

_[14.18.03] Terribly sorry to be on my own for tea._

Qui-Gon smiled, heart aching with warmth and relief. He leaned back against the low couch and wrote back: 

_[18.33.47] Difficult to imagine a better place for it. Beautiful. Your home?_

There was no response until his comm chimed softly, deep into the night. Qui-Gon blinked into foggy awareness, then rolled over in bed to read the message, blearily wondering what the time difference was between the two planets. He squinted into the screen’s bright light. There was no picture this time, just text. 

_[03.04.52] Yes—though not so difficult. Coruscant holds its own appeal for me now._

And so it had gone for another twelve months. 

They saw each other seven times—each encounter more powerful than the last, each parting more painful. 

Theirs grew into a strange, stolen courtship built on countless comm-texts and a handful of furtive nights. They scraped and begged to pull moments of their disparate lives together—an hour or two between field deployments or planetary rotations, one blissful week when Qui-Gon was assigned on-planet, and, lastly, thirteen blistering hours in a sketchy portside hotel on Corellia, between mission transports. 

Obi-Wan had bumped three appointments and a subcommittee hearing to meet Qui-Gon in that grimy ship terminal. Slouched against the far wall with his hands stuffed into his pockets, Obi-Wan had done his best to blend in, but Qui-Gon sensed him immediately—a waft of green-bright summer grass among the layers of filth and oil of that space port. Auburn hair loose around his shoulders, dressed down in Core-style street clothes with the hood of a drab utility jacket pulled low over his face, he’d looked like every fantasy Qui-Gon had never allowed himself to have. 

Obi-Wan had sensed him at once. His head snapped up, gaze flitting over the tarmac until it landed on Qui-Gon’s towering, shrouded-but-unmistakable form. His spine straightened in anticipation, hands clenching around his jacket sleeves as he watched his lover’s approach with growing intensity. 

Qui-Gon’s steps quickened and he’d carelessly dropped his pack when he got close, planting his hands on the rusted wall to either side of Obi-Wan’s head, pressing him tightly in against it with his own body. He stared down with a blazing heat and hunger that weren’t worth hiding—not anymore. "Ben," he whispered, voice low and rough. 

Obi-Wan sank his fists into Qui-Gon’s robe, wound it tight, jerking the cloth taut between them. "Hello there," he’d uttered into the darkness of Qui-Gon’s own hood, breath hot, and then kissed him with unbridled desperation and the sour taste of cheap kiosk caff. 

They had stumbled into the closest hotel that didn’t have a health warning posted, one anonymous pair of lovers among many. Obi-Wan let go of Qui-Gon’s ass just long enough to slap a pile of credits onto the reception desk, then hauled him by the front of his tunic down the cramped, dingy hall to their room. 

Lightheaded with exhaustion and relief, Qui-Gon broke away only long enough to shower off the worst grime and sweat of his last mission. He was fresh out of the standing cubicle, still naked and dripping when Obi-Wan tore the towel from his hand, pushed him down onto the thin mattress, and worked the tension out of his wrung-out muscles with gentle, reverential hands. 

"I have to memorize the feel of you while I can. Every part," he’d murmured into Qui-Gon’s ear, pushing his thumbs deep into the dimples at the base of Qui-Gon’s spine. "You’ll be my meditation…" 

Then Obi-Wan had fucked him so hard and well, the resonant ache of it followed Qui-Gon all the way to his next mission. It was a difficult parting, though—the hardest yet, with something strange and tense lingering between them. He’d left Obi-Wan exhausted, hungry, and worried—still naked and wrapped in a pile of sheets that reeked of sex and the hotel’s industrial-strength detergent. 

"I’ll comm you when I land," Qui-Gon promised him gently, shouldering his rucksack with his free hand. 

"Please be safe," Obi-Wan had whispered, and pressed his lips against Qui-Gon’s knuckles even as he drew away. "Just—be safe." 

  


* * *

  


The memory sustained Qui-Gon three months later, when everything about and within him was growing threadbare and weary. He was deployed to the far reaches of the Mid-Rim as the sole negotiator in a political dispute on the ice-planet Ekbarii-4. The capital, Antramn City, was built at a time when the region wasn’t encased in ice and snow for four of its five seasons. The frost bit at Qui-Gon always, made his eyes water against the sting of it, and the Living Force felt as distant to him as sunlight from the flat, grey, infinite sky. 

The heavily furred natives were as accommodating as could be expected with their humanoid guest, but the chill never quite left him. Regardless of their hospitality, his work there was halting and frustrating. 

Imbued with more money and political power than all the outlying regions combined, the city and its representatives—the same who hosted Qui-Gon—held the failing line against calls for all-out withdrawal from the Republic. As such, intraplanetary, ideological divides between Galactic Republicans and isolationists were fairly common. 

Tenuous reconciliation and mutual support for representation in the Galactic Republic, built on the back of a two-century civil war, significantly less so. 

And so it was Qui-Gon’s duty to moderate the planet’s fate, to one end or the other. That was nothing new for him, though, and it shouldn’t have worn at him the way it did. He’d lost months to the delegates’ mindless bickering—to moments of childish petulance that were punctuated by very real, intense threats of violence between urban and outland representatives. It had driven Qui-Gon to the crumbling edge of his own patience and civility. 

With no progress, no end in sight for this lingering, hostile stalemate, Qui-Gon had finally invoked his right to issue both factions an ultimatum: cooperate by the next morning’s session, or lose the mediative support of the Order. 

Dawn’s stark, white light was just cresting the craggy horizon when Qui-Gon surfaced from meditation in his cramped room. He stretched slowly, ran through a mindful, open-palmed kata to diffuse his lingering tension, and shrugged into his heavy outer robe. The Jedi felt a strange, slow-cresting mix of relief and anticipation that he might be approaching the close of his frustrating mission. 

Qui-Gon had grown accustomed to the soft notification pulses and lights of his mobile comm unit. He’d given Obi-Wan a custom alert—something that sounded a bit like grass rustling in the wind. The noise had become an intrinsic comfort to him, and soothed his edgy loneliness that much more when it chimed from inside his tunic. 

Qui-Gon smiled to himself and swiped the screen awake. 

_[05.18.35] The representative from Ekbarii was killed en route to session this morning. No details released yet._

_[05.22.29] Be careful._

It was the last message he received before the city fell.


	5. Chapter 5

Qui-Gon eats dinner alone, in silence. He packs up the leftovers for Obi-Wan to take to work tomorrow. He washes the dishes, not a single one that isn’t chipped or cracked and glued back together. He does this every night—has done it, for nearly two years now. 

Simple. Repetitive. Mundane. _Safe_. 

Occasionally he allows himself to miss his old life—a dull ache in the back of his head that sometimes, sometimes threatens to tear him open into a yawning, gaping chasm of loss. His fingers itch to close around a 'saber hilt slick with sweat and hot from overuse. To feel the rush of adrenaline, of pride in his work, in a fraught mission completed, and of driving, indefatigable purpose. 

He reminds himself, then, that there are as many facets to _purpose_ as there are to the Code. He reminds himself that, standing here with bony, dishwater-soaked hands, he is the consummate product of that old life: chronically aching, physically diminished, wiser, loved, and never alone. 

The sense of loss passes. 

  


* * *

  


The negotiations were a sham, a means to gather the planet’s urbanite Republican apologists and eliminate them in one fell swoop. It was a simple and ancient ploy, and one that capitalized on the best intentions of an Order which had been prey to the tactic before, yet still deployed its own in the sanguine mission of _keeping peace_ between factions who frequently had little interest in it. 

Their firebombs were shoddy, messy, vicious things constructed in basements and filled with chemicals and scrap metal. Qui-Gon read Obi-Wan’s message, then turned his gaze to the window and watched the first explosions light up the morning sky, melting the ice five months too early. 

Qui-Gon ran into the streets, lightsaber blazing. He deflected shrapnel and rogue blaster shots where he could, shielding and safeguarding with the Force, giving himself over to adrenaline and instinct. When the initial assault died down, he joined the survivors and dug through debris until his body screamed and his hands bled. He hauled bodies out of the frozen rubble, triaging the wounded, lining up the dead as quickly as he could while still allowing for a modicum of respect. 

It wasn’t the most gruesome atrocity he’d ever seen—not by far—but when he pushed aside a block of duracrete and found a mass of copper hair, sticky with blood and brain matter, it was the first time he’d ever been physically sick from it. 

He dug until the outland militia came to collect him and all the other off-worlders who had survived the initial explosions. They came for anyone who was not them, and anyone who got in their way. The soldiers leveled their blasters at Qui-Gon’s face as he stepped between the masses. One, glancing at the lightsaber on his belt, said with the click-hiss of a tongue unaccustomed to Basic, " _The more you fight, the more we shoot_." 

Qui-Gon knew his presence brimmed with the potential to incite more violence. He—and the city’s innocents—were vastly outnumbered, and a single wrong move on his part could be fatally and catastrophically stupid. 

A Jedi spent his lifetime learning to fight; but it was an invaluable and hard-learned skill to know when not to. 

Qui-Gon reached down, slowly, and unclipped the lightsaber. "I yield," he said evenly, calmly, and tossed the hilt onto the ground before his feet. He lifted his arms and wound his fingers at the back of his skull—passive, unthreatening. He went down on his knees in the dirt. 

A moment of tense silence passed, before the others behind him followed his lead. 

Qui-Gon’s lightsaber and comm unit were confiscated with disinterest, and he was separated out from the group and sent to a mass, underground holding facility where he became one in hundreds of filthy, broken, bleeding bodies that were _other_. 

Hours in that hellish place grew into days, grew into three weeks of blood and cold filth and savage hunger. There were never enough blankets, scarcely enough food or potable water, no outside word or contact beyond the few guards who threw in piles of expired ration packs twice a day. It was a foul and hopeless place—overcrowded, dark and airless, rife and stinking with sickness and fear and misery. 

Qui-Gon gave up his food and most of his water; he gave up his thin blanket to sleep on the duracrete floor under his own dirty cloak. He tended wounds, comforted, meditated, dreamt of Obi-Wan in the few hours he managed sleep, and lost any concept of day and night as time stagnated in that windowless place. 

_This_ was the work of a Jedi, he thought, almost manically—not to stand like some exotic wall-hanging at Senate dinners, but to forego his own rations until his vision swam from the hunger. To shiver through the night so another wouldn’t have to. There was meaning in this, there was purpose. There was clarity in this that would grow muddled and murky the moment he set foot in the Temple’s marble corridors, the moment he bowed to another oily billionaire-politician at a state function. If he survived to do so. 

Steadily, the hunger gnawed away the doubt which had plagued Qui-Gon from the moment he set foot on the planet, devoured any spare energy he could _use_ for doubt—in himself, in the Code, in his purpose. There was too much need around him to leave room for any question. 

Love. Serve. What complexity need there be beyond that? 

There had to be, though, in a dwindling, hidebound-traditionalist Jedi Order increasingly funded and propped up by a corrupt and bloated political system. Concessions had to be made, ethical hard-lines bent and bowed as needs must. 

It had been nineteen days, he estimated. Mind growing uncontrolled and half-wild with exhaustion and disorientation, Qui-Gon recognized that his thoughts were careening towards the heretical, so he focused instead on peeling open his ration packet. 

Seated next to him against the duracrete block wall, a woman was watching him. Dirt and dried blood obscured her age, but her eyes were bright, glassy-white, and unblinking from within the ratty blanket drawn high around her head. 

Qui-Gon dug out a single packet of crackers for himself, and offered the rest of the pack to her. 

Her gaze raked over his form, and her mouth twisted down into a thin line. There was recognition on her face, though Qui-Gon wasn’t sure from where. "I don’t want your food, Jedi," said the woman, her tone hard and bitter. "I want my son." 

"I’m sorry," Qui-Gon said softly, voice rusty. He dropped his arm. "Can I hel—" 

"The building came down and smashed his head open," she hissed. "You came to this planet, and they came for us. You put us here, and now my child is dead." 

She lashed out from the folds of dirty cloth and scratched at his face, leaving three long and stinging gashes over his cheek, ear to nose. Everyone around them watched, faces tired and disinterested, and no one lifted a hand to stop her—including Qui-Gon. 

"You’ll die before the sun sets, just like he did," she spat, then shrugged the blanket higher around her face and turned away. 

Cheek burning and dripping blood, Qui-Gon gently set the ration packet down next to her knee, and withdrew in silence. 

  


* * *

  


Republic freighters arrived two days later, the relief workers anxious and ashen-faced as they filed in under the sharp and watchful gazes of armed guards. Qui-Gon caught one woman gently by the elbow. "I’m with the Jedi," he said quietly. "Tell me what I can do." 

"You can keep your head down and move," the Twi’lek responded, voice low and tight, pushing at Qui-Gon’s back. The blue of her skin had a grey cast to it, and her eyes darted nervously around the periphery of the room. "Fast now. Go. Keep others calm if you can. I will find you later." 

He was directed onto the awaiting freighter, handed a thermal blanket, a cup of rich, reconstituted soup, and a bottle of water. The atmosphere was tense and quiet, but controlled, beneath the trained eye of the workers—so he wearily settled himself in for the hour wait at one of the tiny comm terminals. He felt strangely numb, hollowed-out—there was little relief for him, though he knew he was safe for the first time in weeks. 

Emotion began to return when Qui-Gon finally logged into his Temple account. His heart contracted within his chest at the flood of messages that awaited him, all from Obi-Wan. 

_[09.27.59] Reports of mass casualty event in Atramn City?_

_[09.30.32] Tell me you’re safe, answer me when you can_

_[12.25.00] Please Qui_

_[…]_

_[02.44.45] Emergency session at Annex. Kenaari part of negotiations to get off-worlders out._

_[14.57.47] 43 humanoids listed among dead no details_

_[19.01.02] Off-worlders being released. Closing off planet to Republic officials. Best they can do._

_[22.45.33] Chancellor has authorized emergency funding for the transports; sentient relief crews en route_

_[22.53.43] Ekbarii want no Republic officials, no Jedi_

_[…]_

_[05.12.24] Please be safe_

_[23.55.34] I can’t sleep can’t meditate_

_[14.03.22] Come home to me_

_[14.04.03] I love you_

_[14.07.43] Please let me tell you in person_

_[14.25.21] I love you_

_[…]_

The string spanned nearly two hundred messages over the course of the three weeks. Qui-Gon didn’t have enough time or emotional reserves to read all of them, so he picked one at random and replied, simply: 

_[01.23.10] safe_

He waited just long enough to see that the message had been delivered, before he turned the terminal over to a weeping, sallow-faced Togruta. 

"Sir Jedi," someone called out—the same Twi’lek woman as before. She looked calmer now, the edges of her felt smoother in the Force. She held out the half-crushed remains of his comm unit—then his lightsaber, caked with mud and oil, but intact all the same. "Tossed in with everyone else’s confiscated belongings," she explained. "We were instructed by the Order to look for it and you." 

Qui-Gon closed his eyes for just a moment, feeling the comforting weight of the weapon in his palm. "Thank you," was all he said. 

Her gaze flickered over his form, evaluating with clinical efficiency. "Are you in need of medical assistance?" 

He opened his eyes again, then tucked the 'saber and broken comm away into the folds of his tunic. "No," he said, with a weary, thin smile. "Nothing rest won’t cure." 

"I will tell your Order you are safe and coming home." 

_Home_. 

Qui-Gon wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. 

He sank back against the cold wall and slept poorly for the remaining few hours of the trip. Once in Republic space, he was rerouted onto a smaller transport bound for Coruscant. There were few beings on that particular trip, and the pilot was kind enough to drop him directly at the Temple’s public, commercial landing platform with a sympathetic salute. 

Qui-Gon gazed up with weary, bloodshot eyes. The Temple loomed high above him, dark and austere but for the few glimmers of light high within its spires. A year and a half ago, he might have sagged in relief at the sight of his home of a near half-century. 

Filthy and tattered, he turned around and caught the first taxi that would accept him. 

His knuckles left smudges of dirt and oil on Obi-Wan’s door. When it slipped open, he was aware on some distant level that Obi-Wan had pulled him in close—that he was clutching at the smaller man’s shoulders—but all he could focus on were the crescents of blood-ruddy dirt under his nails, the blue furl of his own veins over the stark tendons of his hands. 

Obi-Wan’s voice came to him like surfacing through murky water. "—me you’re alright." 

"What?" Qui-Gon blinked, shifting his head just a bit against Obi-Wan’s. 

Obi-Wan was patient with him. Patient and gentle and warmer than anything Qui-Gon had touched in weeks—in _months_. It was too much and he was too exhausted—too exhausted to think beyond the sensory, base elements of his own body, the way Obi-Wan was solid, was real, and was as safe as he himself was safe in turn. 

Qui-Gon gave in. He sank to his knees right there in the doorway, pressing his cheek into the lean curve of Obi-Wan’s belly, eyes closed, hands fisted into the soft cloth of his lover’s tunic. Oh, but he could have lived there happily, _happily_ as long as Obi-Wan would let him. 

Obi-Wan’s fingers were in his hair—soothing, skimming through it, down the back of Qui-Gon’s head, his neck, his shoulders. Checking for injuries, Qui-Gon realized distantly and dream-like. 

"Are you hurt?" Obi-Wan asked in a low, measured voice as he pressed carefully against the back of Qui-Gon’s ribcage. "I need to know if you are." 

"I’m fine," Qui-Gon mumbled, rubbing his grimy cheek into Obi-Wan’s clean, white shirt. "I’m fine." 

"Get your clothes off, then," Obi-Wan instructed mildly, just authoritative enough to get Qui-Gon’s attention. "I’ll start the shower. Have you checked in with the Temple yet?" 

Qui-Gon couldn’t remember. The Twi’lek woman had done that for him, he thought, so he nodded once. 

"Alright. Can you stand?" 

Obi-Wan carefully steered Qui-Gon into the 'fresher and made him sit on the slick tile floor. Obi-Wan knelt at the edge of the shower, and methodically washed his lover's hair twice and scrubbed his whole body three times over before he was satisfied. Lastly, he wet the edge of his own undershirt and stretched it over his index finger to clean where the thick washcloth couldn’t—swiping in careful strokes beneath Qui-Gon’s ragged nails. 

The Jedi stared at the thin, dirty streaks left behind on the white cloth, then closed his own hands around Obi-Wan’s. "You’re shaking." 

Obi-Wan let out a sharp breath. "It’s a—it’s a good thing," he said. There was a brittle, tremulous edge to his voice, like he was just barely holding himself together for Qui-Gon’s sake. "The negotiations were closed-door, so all I could do was fetch tea and caff and eavesdrop on people in the 'fresher. I’ve been a terrible, restless nightmare since this all began, and now it’s all leaving me at once." 

"You wrote to me," Qui-Gon remarked, watching with tired eyes as Obi-Wan paused to pick a splinter out of his thumb. 

"I’d have gone mad, otherwise." Obi-Wan let their hands drop into his lap, dampening splotches into the tan cloth of his trousers. He looked up and offered a wan smile. "Perhaps I’ll run my own senate campaign, so the next time you land yourself in a political quagmire, I won’t have to wait in the wings." 

The joke sank like a stone in the pit of Qui-Gon’s stomach. He dropped his head, sending the room into a dizzying lurch around him. "This—what we have isn’t simple anymore, Obi-Wan," he murmured, uncharacteristically fatalistic. "This is the reality of it. This is all I can offer you," he said, voice drifting a thousand lightyears away, still trapped in its dark and freezing prison. "A life where the best outcome I can offer is survival. Just survival." Nausea, thick and sour, churned in his gut. "That’s all I have." 

"Don’t talk like that." 

"You can’t want that for yourself. _I_ don’t want it for you," Qui-Gon insisted, plaintive, tightening his grip almost painfully around Obi-Wan’s fingers. "This is it—this is the moment we choose what we are—and you deserve better than this." 

There were those who would have balked at the sight of Master Qui-Gon Jinn, the _Maverick_ —naked and soaking wet, pathetic and begging on another man’s 'fresher floor. He was torn raw and open, the worst and most vulnerable parts of him gutted and exposed—and he felt more honest than he’d ever been in his life. He felt seen for what he truly was, _whatever_ he truly was beneath the oppressive weight of his training and duty. 

It was terrifying and freeing in equal measure. 

Obi-Wan finally scraped the splinter out with a bright pinprick of pain. "You don’t get to decide what I deserve," he said crisply. "I’d take you, filthy and exhausted out of your mind on my 'fresher floor, over anything else in the galaxy. I—" Obi-Wan was gentle but firm when he lifted Qui-Gon’s chin, " _Look at me_ ," he tutted, and forced Qui-Gon to meet his steely gaze. "Anything you will ever be, _I will want_ ," he said fiercely. "Do you understand that?" 

Qui-Gon’s protest was weak and growing weaker. "You don’t know that." 

"You’re a Force sensitive, not a telepath. Don’t conflate the two," Obi-Wan countered quietly. There wasn’t any heat behind the words, just lingering worry and glass-edged anxiety. "Don’t forget that I was slated for that life, too, once. It’s—I’m not blind to it. There’s not a day you’ve walked out my door that I haven’t wondered if you’ll—" He cut his own words off and cleared his throat. "At any rate. You’re here now, and you’re safe. That’s rather all I can ask for, really." He curled his hand around Qui-Gon’s cheek, brushing the water droplets away with his thumbs. "Alright?" 

Qui-Gon gave in for the second time that evening, and sat in pliant silence. 

Obi-Wan shut the spray off, squeezed the water out of Qui-Gon’s hair, then did a strange and unexpected thing where he nimbly braided it up off the back of his neck, just the way he’d done his own so many times. 

"Obi-Wan—" 

"Hm?" 

"You— _Ben_ —" Qui-Gon swallowed, feeling adrift and out of his depth and so very, very tired. "You alone are worth protecting the galaxy for," he said towards the floor. 

Obi-Wan’s hands stilled in his hair. 

Qui-Gon pushed on. "The smallest and most insignificant parts of it. The worst of it. I’ll give everything I am to keep it safe if it means you’ll b—" He sighed wearily and shook his head, finally letting his mind collapse beneath its own exhaustion. "I love you, also. That’s all." 

When he looked up again, Obi-Wan’s eyes were squeezed shut and he was biting down on his lip, hard enough to bruise. "You impossible thing," Obi-Wan finally uttered under his breath, and kissed Qui-Gon’s temple. He lifted his hands to cup Qui-Gon’s face, and pressed their foreheads together for a long, quiet moment, sharing space and breath. "Up now, you big, soggy tree," he eventually said, voice thick. 

Obi-Wan toweled him dry, dabbed bacta gel onto his scrapes and scratches, then handed him a clean pair of underclothes and loose trousers from the spares he kept in the dresser. Qui-Gon dressed slowly while Obi-Wan disappeared into the kitchen; at a loss otherwise, he sank down onto the edge of the mattress, elbows on his knees, head bowed as he ran his palms down the braided knot of his own hair, over and over again, finding focus in the repetition of it. 

That’s how Obi-Wan found him five minutes later. He padded into the room with a mug of reheated soup and crouched on the rug at Qui-Gon’s feet, watching as he drank it down, slowly and carefully. 

"This isn’t normal, you know. The things you do for the Republic. Coming back like this," Obi-Wan murmured, resting his cheek on Qui-Gon’s knee and gazing up at him. "Or healthy. Any part of it." 

Qui-Gon paused and set the bowl down on the low bedside table, then carded his fingers through Obi-Wan’s hair. It was clean and silken beneath his touch, burnished copper in the low lamplight. "I’ve been through much worse than this mission," he said, and meant for it to be reassuring. 

"That’s what frightens me." 

"It will pass. Rest and meditation." 

"I know," Obi-Wan said, flat and unconvinced. He rose to his feet and reached past Qui-Gon to pull the heavy blankets back. "Hop to it, then." 

Too weary and emotionally drained for sex, they pressed themselves together in Obi-Wan’s bed. Sprawled on his stomach atop his young lover, Qui-Gon had rucked Obi-Wan’s fresh sleep-shirt up for the sake of having bare skin to rest his cheek against. He felt his first thread of calm, of himself again, of his center and serenity, simply lying still and listening to the Living Force in the steady thrum of Obi-Wan’s heartbeat. 

"You vastly overestimate your ability to destroy lives, Master Jedi," Obi-Wan muttered after a long moment of heavy silence. 

"Oh?" Qui-Gon responded, voice muffled against Obi-Wan’s stomach. 

"It borders on arrogance, really—dangerous thing, that. The sort of behavior it takes a lifetime to unlearn." 

The Jedi huffed, letting Ekbarii’s lingering, invisible ice fall away as he was plied gently back into himself with humor and the soft touch of Obi-Wan’s hands. "Will you be the one to unteach me?" 

"I’d like to be." 

Qui-Gon lifted his head, brow furrowed. 

Obi-Wan sighed and stared at the ceiling, but his fingers maintained their soothing path over Qui-Gon’s hair. "I know I’m young—I _know_ that. But I’m not naive, Qui-Gon." 

"No," Qui-Gon agreed quietly. He dropped his head again, pressing into the hollow of Obi-Wan’s chest. "You’re not." 

"I sense what we’re skirting with the Order, by being together like this. The—" Obi-Wan’s expression knotted, "— _potentiality_ of it, one way or another." 

"A vision?" 

"A feeling." Obi-Wan sighed and pressed his cheek to the crown of Qui-Gon’s head. "You’re so convinced you’re undeserving of love or happiness. Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re punishing yourself, or it’s just what the Order has taught you to do," he admitted, voice threaded with faint and drifting bitterness. 

"You’re not naive, but you’re too young for cynicism like that," Qui-Gon chided him gently. 

"All the same," Obi-Wan said, "I do love you, Master Jedi. Quite irrevocably. I know that for certain, and I would like to keep on with it as long as I have the privilege to do so." 

Qui-Gon would never understand Obi-Wan’s innate ability to make him feel humbled and immensely cherished in a single statement. "Come what may?" he asked. 

"Come what may," Obi-Wan answered. 

They spoke long into the night. Mumbled whispers, interspersed with soft, hesitant kisses and touches—reassurances. It should have unnerved Qui-Gon, what they talked about, the gravity of what they were delving into, but the words only settled deep into his bones, soothing and _right_. 

The weight of their discussion hung heavy between them, even into the next morning. 

Obi-Wan made him breakfast and a pot of tea, dug out the fresh pair of tunics and robes Qui-Gon kept in the apartment, and saw him to the door. Hair in a messy knot, dressed in a long sleep-robe that slipped perilously over one freckled shoulder—the sight of Obi-Wan like that made Qui-Gon’s heart ache with love and desire, and the idea of returning to the Temple alone felt like tearing away from some part of himself. 

He bent down to press a soft kiss against that bare shoulder, smoothing away the dampness with his fingers. "It wouldn’t be easy for you," Qui-Gon said, sounding more like his normal self. He slipped his arms around Obi-Wan’s waist and drew him close. "Even given your history—it would be an uphill battle, and whatever awaits us at the top might be unpleasant." 

"I know," Obi-Wan soothed him. He clutched his own mug of tea between them, tight against his chest. "But we have time, darling," he said, cupping Qui-Gon’s face with his free hand and arching up to kiss his scruffy cheek. "We don’t have to make any decisions now, alright?" 

"I know," Qui-Gon echoed, with the faint trace of his first true smile in months. 

Obi-Wan was still holding him when he reached to press the door panel, and it hissed open. 

Leaning against the corridor wall, arms folded into the sleeves of his robe, Mace Windu greeted them with an arched brow. His eyes flicked over Qui-Gon’s form once, quickly, taking the measure of him. 

"Glad to see you’re on your feet, Qui-Gon," Mace finally said, voice low and even and revealing nothing. "You’ll have to forgive me for tracking your comm unit. We were understandably concerned when you never returned to the Temple after your transport landed." 

The two men stared at each other. 

The rest of Obi-Wan’s traitorous robe slipped off his shoulders. 

Mace tipped his head and leveled that dark gaze squarely upon Obi-Wan. "Good morning, Magistrate Kenobi," he said evenly. "Are you available for a Council meeting this afternoon, or should I go through your admin droid to schedule it?"


End file.
